One great thing about my job(s) is that every day is a new adventure. Sometimes the adventure is the “sit on the deck of a cruise ship sipping something naughty from a pineapple” type and sometimes it’s the “root canal while drinking ice water without the good happy gas” type. Fortunately, I spend more days sipping from proverbial pineapples than getting root canals but I sure wouldn’t turn down a thank-you tank of happy gas now and then!
Today was one of those cruise ship days. Rather exhausting but full of little moments that make you want to hum on your way home. During science class, some students spun orbit simulators over their heads to investigate how weight effects orbit while others used latex sheets and water balloons to investigate orbital pathways using a marble. No one was injured, nothing got broke, and they all looked ridiculous wearing the safety goggles. It’s always a good day when goggles are involved.
As a service learning project, all 58 of my students are learning to knit. Yep, even the boys. The Needle Arts Mentoring Project donated all the needles and some start-up yarn. I just had to be brave enough to give pointy sticks to 12 year olds! Their mission is to knit at least one 6×9 inch rectangle to be sent to the Afghan Project: an organization that assembles rectangles into afghans for wounded soldiers recovering in the hospital. One of the boys has become so addicted to knitting that he has challenged himself to knit a continuous narrow scarf that will go around the mile track. He’s got 30 feet done. Only 5000+ to go! Two of the girls came to me today and needed advice on basketweave and stripe patterns. They only learned to knit 10 weeks ago. At least 20 of the students carry their knitting everywhere throughout the day. It’s a great feeling knowing that I’ve helped others to learn that knitting can give you a sense of accomplishment and peace. They’ll have 30 more years to enjoy it than I will.
I just returned from teaching my college class. It looks like I’ll be teaching two next semester! If the details can be worked out, I’ll be teaching Technology in Education along with my Intro to Scientific Inquiry course. Tonight I watched as 16 adults measured things using toothpicks, learned about the reproductive habits of bees, and played with prisms and laser pointers. Everything was new and exciting and I learned that college students still want to make laser pointer swirlies on the ceiling. Not much changes from sixth grade!
Whether the students are 12 or 22 seems to make little difference. They all remind me of why I have chalk dust on my butt and overhead marker on my face. Because of what I do, there are dozens of people home tonight talking about the cool thing that spun, the new stitch they learned, or how many sparkles an engagement ring produces when a laser pointer hits it. Not one could say they answered questions in a text book and I’m not the least bit upset by that.
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Tags: afghan project, inquiry, knitting, needle arts mentoring, science, students
November 5, 2009 at 11:22 am |
Therein lies the difference in being a good teacher or being one who fails a kid because he cannot remember what date the battle was, the exact number of soldiers in it and the exact number who died, and all for five to seven battles of the Civil War.
Rather than teaching him the whys of the war and the how nots.
November 5, 2009 at 11:47 am |
[...] mind that she is my daughter, read this good teacher’s blog at Cool Moments in Teaching « Braindebris’s Weblog and tell me what you think? Is this not what we would like to see all teacher’s [...]